Zombie Nurse

When I work 3rd shift, everyday is like waking up with a hangover. Body aches, head aches. Nothing that Motrin or Tylenol can really touch. A constant fuzziness in my brain, like the grey matter started to mold up there. Put that Reticular Activating System back in the crisper would you? Oops someone forgot to close the cerebellum bag. Now it’s all crusty and dry. Damn it. I was going to use that.

Can’t get enough sleep--ever. After three 12 hour shifts in a row, I crash. I go to bed during day light hours, but don’t wake up until it’s dark again. The daylight never happened. It’s winter in Michigan; there’s no daylight anyway. In my dreams, I pop vitamin D pills like their M&Ms and visit long hallways filled with tanning beds and UV lights.

The zombie apocalypse is real. We are the living zombies. We eat. We sleep. Sometimes we shit and shower. We go to work. And then we do it all over again. Notice that glazed look in our eyes. bRaIns! BrAiNs! We can’t seem to wake our brains. So we crave yours hoping that if we eat your dayshift brains, we will feel the sun on our pale dead bodies.

I watch other people sleep. I’m the night shift nurse with the squeaky shoes that opens the door every hour to make sure that you’re sleeping. This is why you can’t sleep in the hospital. I can’t sleep, so neither should you.

“Are you having any chest pain?” I ask.
“No, not right now. I’m sleeping,” You say.
“I could have sworn you said you were having chest pain.”
“I was sleeping”.
“Does this hurt?” I ask as I punch you in the chest.
“Hey—Ouch!”
“Better get you some nitro. Let me get your vital signs. While we’re at it, we should get a troponin and an EKG.”
The phlebotomist jabs a needle in your vein while the respiratory therapist places cold electrodes on your chest.
“But it doesn’t really hurt that much,” You say.
I pump the blood pressure cuff up to 250mmHg.

When I’m not working, I have found that activities that used to be enjoyable have lost their appeal.

Instead of cooking, I point and click on Facebook’s Café World. I point and click an entire meal, watching virtual people enjoy gingerbread houses, pot roasts and gourmet duck. Wish I felt like cooking.

Instead of writing, I watch Buck Roger’s Episodes on Hulu.

Instead of going to the movies, I stream movies through the Xbox from Netflix.

Eating? Brains sound good. Otherwise I’m a little nauseated. Healthy choices like vegetables and fruits seem obsolete. I want brains and junk food. Brains and chocolate chip cookies. Brains and chips.

Why bother getting dressed on my days off? For that matter, why bother showering? I’m probably just going to get back into bed in a few hours anyway, so that I can sleep during those normal sleeping hours when it’s dark--instead of working under fluorescent lights. So off days become pajama days on the couch. Followed by more sleeping in the bed.

Naptime replaces all favorite hobbies, interests and relationships.

Is Gary Dop God?

The Michigan lottery was just hanging out on the corner of Butternut and 144th with their trailer of lotto cash. The bills were part of a large sheet of perforated cardboard. Each rectangle was worth $1000. It was on a first come first serve basis. Magically, I was the first to arrive and emptied the trailer except for a few bills. I took the sheets rather than trying to separate the bills. It seemed the only logical thing to do. Before I could count my $1000 pieces of cardboard, I woke up.

But if you look up dreams about money, it’s never about money. Freudian thought views money as a symbol for excrement. Isn’t it obvious that a pile of cash is really just a pile of shit? I most certainly wouldn’t want to spend it or pay my bills. It’s really that I have a problem with anal fixation, and I’m mentally damaged from strict toilet training as a child. What the fuck? Everything is about sex or shit with Freud.

I played the lotto on Friday the 13th. I didn’t win. This isn’t some happy fairy story. But Jacks won $20 on a scratch off. Maybe her luck was my luck by proximity. Really, I have been more fortunate lately. In September, I was offered and accepted a new job in ICU/TU when the odds of finding a new job in this economy are 5%. I’m not sure who came up with that number, but it makes a good story. The 1st day that I worked in ICU on my own, I had a seriously critically ill patient on a ventilator with an ART line, CVP line and about 7 IV solutions all working to keep this patient alive. I would not have been surprised if this patient had died, but the patient lived that night and the next night. My new boss sent me an e-mail congratulating me on my good work! Me, who was scared shitless to work in ICU.

Last week I received an acceptance letter from Vagabondage Press. They accepted “The Key Collector” for The Battered Suitcase for the Spring 2010 issue. http://www.vagabondagepress.com/

It’s not just me either. Some of my MFA buddies have reported prize nominations and acceptances for their writings. My MFA buddies say that this new fortune should be attributed to Gary Dop. http://www.garydop.com/index.html Gary Dop is God, they say. He is also a University of Nebraska MFA graduate. It’s rumored that his poetry gets published every month. In fact, he might even get paid to write. So they follow the Commandments of Dop, hoping that they too can receive publishing blessings. #1 Send out multiple submissions. #2 Snail mail has a better chance of being accepted than e-mail. #3 Keep sending out multiple submissions. Okay, so I don’t really know the commandments, because I don’t believe in Gary Dop. I believe that he exists. I just don’t believe in his supernatural powers. And then I took his name in vain. Gary Dop Damn it! My MFA buddies chastised me. Maybe if I believed in Gary Dop, I’d win the lotto. Maybe I could make a Gary Dop shrine and pray to his mother. Maybe I could hang a painting of him over my bed, so he could look down upon me while I sleep peacefully in my bed and dream about winning the lotto and getting published.

The Longest Relationship I Ever Had

10 years and 7 months—something like that. Almost everything I know about nursing, I learned there. My job has probably been the only stable thing in my life. I have moved 8 times, lost 2 partners, almost lost my mom, watched my father-in-law die, started and abandoned the MSN program and finished my MFA. That’s the short version.


Even before the restructuring, I knew the end was drawing near. I could feel it at 6:30 am as I walked down the long corridor. I wondered how many more times I would ride the elevator to my floor. What was next? I kept having dreams about tornadoes and tsunamis. These dreams are often about change and rebirth. I thought maybe I would die in a fiery plane crash on my way to Nebraska. That obviously didn’t happen.


Yesterday I worked the last day at my 1st nursing job. I didn’t know it was going to be my last day until the day before. It was anti-climatic. A regular let’s discharge everybody Friday. No bangles. No buzzers. No banners. Just an e-mail on how I’ll leave a void. Assholes leave voids too.


Packed up my stash of snacks. Emptied the freezer. Shredded my mail file and evaluation portfolio. Picked out the books that were still relevant.


All day I made a list in my head of the things that I won’t miss. All the discharge paper work—not many people are discharged on the night shift. Not having a bright light over the bed. Being on the last floor the doctors come to round. Getting up at 4:30am. The constant ring of the phone. Semi-private rooms. Medications in a million different places. Being Vocera-ed for stupid ass shit—but maybe that will be somebody else’s job.


J.G. asked me if I was a little sad. She asked if I was going to miss them. I said that I was and that I would, but I hesitated a little and laughed at the end. So she didn’t believe me. You’re not really sad, she said. Well, I am, but I don’t want to be. And I most certainly don’t want to be in front of people. It’s hard to be sad when I know I’m only going to be 5 floors down, and in all likelihood will be back as a float staff from my new floor. And it’s hard to be sad when I don’t feel anything yet. Except a sinking, nauseated feeling in my stomach. Besides nobody died. Everybody is still right there where I left them—for now.


I stood in my boss’s office to say good-bye. I think maybe she was holding back tears. Maybe. It was verging on something emotional, and I didn’t like it. I had this compulsion to hug her, but I know she doesn’t like hugs. Instead I said, this feels weird, so I’m out of here.


Truthfully, I’m scared shitless. I’ll be the one orientating, not mentoring someone else. I’ll be the new person. I’ll be the person who doesn’t know stuff. And I’m really going to miss them.

Naked Moms & Notes on how to be more pathetic

Goddamn it. Mom wants to be my Facebook friend. WTF? She's not the most computer literate person. But I'm sure one thing will lead to another, and she'll find my irreverent blog. Fucking A. So much for getting myself out there.


Any suggestions? I can’t not friend my own mother. I’m sorry you gave birth to me, but you can’t be my Facebook friend. Letting Mom read my stuff is like being naked. It's not cool to be naked in front of your mom. Not cool at all.


Speaking of nakedness and mothers--not to be confused with naked mothers. Mom's been wearing this rather thin, worn night gown. She needs a new one. It's so thin she wears a robe over it. She says they don't have nightgowns anymore only pjs. I find this hard to believe. Anyway . . .I ask her what’s wrong with pjs. She says that she wears a nightgown because Dad likes easy access. I can't believe my mother is saying shit like this. My mother who doesn't like to discuss sex, religion or politics.


On another note --the bitching about work note--I applied for the ICU/TU position again. Never got an interview the last time. That’s pathetic. Not being able to even get an interview with the organization I currently work for. Please hire me. I'm pathetic and poor. I can be cute too if you just give me a chance. Smart? We'll have to work on smart.


Changed my cover letter. Cited specific examples of how awesome I was the last time I worked on their floor. If this doesn’t work, I may have to resort to a fictional resume or maybe a creative non-fiction with a disclaimer. *Certain facts were embellished. *Certain events were manufactured. *References may be manufactured for aesthetic reasons.

Flexibility

http://tigerlilydust.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/flexible/

The Manufactured Nursing Shortage

In 1986 my Allergist told me there would be a nursing shortage in 2000. I was 10 years old, I believed anything my doctor told me. I’m not sure why I remember him telling me that. Why would a 10 year old care if there was going to be any kind of shortage in the future unless it was chocolate ice cream or pizza or something of immediate value. Besides, I had plans to become a doctor, an Allergist or a Pulmonologist. I could see the years of schooling stretched out before me.


At 13 writing seemed like the profession for me. I would create these stories and write my friends in as characters. I made them laugh. I had no problems with chemistry and biology. And math—I could do it. But every night it was a struggle, Dad helping me with my math homework and me crying. Some story problem about polka-dot shirts. I don’t think we ever got that one right. English made sense. I wanted to be Anne of Green Gables. I wanted to be V.C. Andrews. That’s before I realized that V.C. Andrews was not good literature.


But I sobered up and chose a nursing major. It was practical, and I didn’t know what else to do. I could always write in my spare time.


In 1996 there weren’t waiting lists to get into GVSU Kirkhof School of nursing. And you didn’t need a 4.0 to get either. There seemed to be plenty of instructors.


Currently, there are not enough nursing instructors to teach the amount of students who are waiting. But this is manufactured. When I was in nursing school, they were starting to phase out all the instructors who did not have their doctorate. A masters degree in nursing wasn’t good enough to teach it anymore. This completely eliminated the number of available instructors thus creating a “shortage.” With fewer instructors, GVSU was forced to admit less nursing students to its program. And this created the waiting list and ridiculously high standards. Especially when I hear that they are picking students based solely on grade point averages. I’m sorry this doesn’t make a good nurse.


I didn’t remember this until just last week. But they told us in 1998 that hospital nursing was on its way out, because hospital stays were not has long and many surgeries were being done on an outpatient basis. Since I started in 1999, I have seen a decrease in admissions for rotator cuff repairs and ACL repairs. People go home the same day. I have seen people have microdiskectomies and go home the same day.


The hospitals in the area have very few positions open for RNs. The ones listed are part-time, prn or on-call. Hospitals w, x, y, z. Hospital W mandated a wage freeze, laid off nurses and restructured. Hospital X is not doing so well after building a new hospital. They have cut employee hours. I expect them to go under and be bought about by Hospital Z. Hospital Y is also not doing so well after building a new hospital. Hospital Z was in a hiring freeze for about a year. Hospital V seems to be doing okay—they have the most job postings. Hospital U is a floundering small hospital that closed one of its specialty areas. I really don’t know that they do much of anything.

I can definitely say that there is not a nursing shortage in the hospital industry.

Shameless Prostitution

Maureen suggested that I start a Blog to create a web presence. She suggested I do that rather than mope on the couch and eat brownies for breakfast and be depressed about being graduated and mostly unpublished with nothing to look forward to except for $40,000 in student loans. This is where I insert a commercial for bringtheink.com. That is where you will find my dystopic short story “People Factory.”

Someone asked me if I felt differently now that I had my MFA. It’s not any different than turning 33. But that was silly of me to expect that I would feel something else. That’s like an alcoholic trying to find happiness at the bottom of the Popov—when there’s nothing but a cheap head ache.

This is my shameless attempt to get myself out there. My family is waiting for me to create the next Harry Potter so that I can put them in a luxurious retirement community rather than a stinky nursing home. I keep telling them that I write short stories and that nobody pays. It’s like playing the lottery. I submit a short story with a $10 to $25 fee for contests with higher odds of being rejected than accepted. So in actuality I have a gambling problem. I’ll be lucky if I can give my stories away.

I’ll be prostituting myself on Division Street. Instead of wearing short skirts and fishnet stockings, I’ll be standing there in Birkenstocks and a bathrobe with an extension cord running to my laptop from the independent coffee shop (because they feel sorry for vagrant writers). I’ll scream of cheapness. I’ll give you my story for free. Just pick me up and we can drive around the block. I’ll tell you that it costs more to print it out than it does just to lick the screen. After a while, I’ll start to worry that I have some sort of disease for pedaling my stories to strangers. I’ll wonder if I have brain cancer from sitting in front of the computer screen too long or maybe the electromagnetic waves have effected my girl parts from too many late night lap dances.

Every writer is a narcissist. Even when we’re not writing about ourselves, we’re still writing about ourselves. We project ourselves onto real characters and into the fictional ones—they’re all versions of ourselves. But this blog isn’t going to be all about writing. Writers writing about writing—Jesus, isn’t that what they always do?

So it’s a good thing I have a real job, so I can bitch about nursing. In my real life, I’m a Registered Nurse. RN also stands for Registered Narcotics Pusher and Registered Nag. Or maybe Registed Narcissist? Due to the unfortunate circumstances with the Michigan economy, my place of employment has felt it necessary to restructure. My hours were cut. Instead of working 60 hours every 2 weeks, I’ll be working 40 hours every 2 weeks. This brings me back to prostitution and homelessness. All that bullshit about a nursing shortage—not true.

So I hope to blog about injustice, politics, health care, LGBTQ issues, various current events, food, death, tattoos, mental illness and myself. Not in any particular order. Names may or may not be changed to protect guilty or innocent parties. And some seemingly non-fiction parts may or may not be fictionalized